Talk:The Song That Never Ends
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Well, I did a few checks. All of the quoted appearances of the song use "The Song that Never Ends", or some variation thereof. (I'm pretty sure about Lamb Chop's Play-Along - though I'm relying on the memories of children, they're the ones who would know.) Most of the references on the Wiki still point to "...Never Ends". Based on this, I'm going to move the page back to "...Never Ends", and note the other as a variation. - Scooter 19:09, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm 100% certain that on Lamb Chop's Play-Along, they sang "this is the song that doesn't end." I watched that show constantly as a teenager (yes, I watched a kid's show, so sue me). I found a CD on Amazon.com from the TV show -- it doesn't have an official tracklist posted since it appears to be out of print, but both the user reviews identify it as "The Song That Doesn't End." It may be a variation of the possibly better-known "...Never Ends," but that's still what they were singing and I'd be willing to bet any amount of money on it. --Lazylisa 16:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
- Lamb Chop's Play-Along episode with the song. Well, the end credits where it shows up, anyway. Kit Foxtrot (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
- In the copyright info in the liner notes for Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Que (which contains a rendition of the song), it is listed as "The Song That Doesn't End". Tony Myers 08:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Are the lyrics copyrighted or public domain?
It is against Wikipedia policy to include copyrighted lyrics of a song in any article. Can anyone confirm that the two sets of lyrics (in particular the one used for the Shari Lewis TV show) are public domain? If not, they may need to be removed. 23skidoo 15:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
Isn't recursive? How is it any less recursive than "The Song That Never Ends?" Recury 01:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
- It's infinite, but not recursive. One iteration of John Jacob etc. makes sense:
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, His name is my name too. Whenever we go out The people always shout, "There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt." La, la, la, la, la, la
- But one iteration of this song doesn't:
This is the song that never ends, Yes, it goes on and on, my friend Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, And they'll continue singing it forever just because—
- See the differences? Ckerr 08:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] A Hundred Bottles of Beer On The Wall
This song can be adapted to "never end." If one changes the song to "A Quintillion Bottles Of Beer On The Wall," singing the song continuously would take about 475 TRILLION years (give or take several billion). Given current cosmological theories, the universe would collapse upon itself (The Big Crunch), or all of the matter would be Iron 59 (no more matter could be converted into energy) and all the energy in the universe would be "internal energy," thus creating a condition where further entropy increase is impossible. Hence, the universe would end before the song would, and in effect the song would "never end." Weyandt 19:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
- A song that takes longer than the age of the universe to end is not mathematically equivalent to a song that goes on forever. For example, if you transpose the quintillion bottles of beer on the wall song up 44 octaves by speeding up the recording, it will only take a 18 months to listen to. This is hardly even impressive--Wagner's Ring cycle is almost that long! (Well, so it seems.) Ckerr 08:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
- Aww, c'mon! First, by my calculations (dividing 475,000,000,000,000 by 2^44 or 17,592,186,044,416) reduces the time to 27 years. You need to speed up the record by 48 octaves to reduce the song time to a-year-and-a-half. That isn't the real problem. Speeding up the record by 44 octaves would make the recording bandwith go from 351,843,720,888,320 Hz to 351,843,720,888,320,000 Hz. As the fastest processor operates in the GHz range, there isn't any player out there that could play the recording sped up this much. And then one must consider our inability to hear sounds of such incredibly high frequencies. Second, the end of the universe would have the same effect on "The Song That Never Ends" and "A Quntillion Bottles of Beer On The Wall." Both songs would stop at (well, way before) the Big Crunch, or the new theory about Dark Energy destroying every particle in the universe, called the Big Rip.Weyandt 20:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
- Why not just set the first line to "∞ bottles of beer on the wall"? Then the song would continue "∞ - 1 bottles", "∞ - 2 bottles", and so on ad infinitum. That would be a never-ending version of the song. --Nucleusboy 18:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
- When you think about it, that's a good idea. Also remember that ∞ - 1 = ∞, because ∞ is an undefined number. So you'd "take one down, pass it around," and still have "infinity bottles of beer on the wall." The song becomes infinite and recursive. Of course, this isn't as funny as taking one down with a quintillion bottles up there, and trying to sing "nine-hundred-ninety-nine-quadrillion-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-trillion-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-billion-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-million-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall."Weyandt 17:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I originally learned this song as:
"This is the song that never ends. Yes it goes on and on, my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, And now they can't stop singing it because..."
It sounds better like this than the one in the article. They should put in this variation as well. Note that there's an extremely short pause between "people" and "started" 98.197.59.217 (talk) 20:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- I remember the song as:
This is the song that never ends. Yes it goes on and on, my friends. Some people... started singing it not knowing what it was, And they'll continue singing it forever just because...
- It was from a TV series that I used to watch as a kid some time ago that I can't remember the name of. Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 21:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
